"There are theoretic considerations," said Kim, dry-throated, "which make a material weapon like atomic explosive unthinkable. There are other considerations which make it certain that any immaterial weapon that could destroy a planet would have infinite speed and therefore infinite range. _If_ Ades has been destroyed, all the human race, including us, must sooner or later be subject to those who control such a weapon." Kim Rendell paused and cleared his throat. "If they start off by destroying the only world on which men are free, I don't think I like it. Now I must go back home. I'd better get over to the First Galaxy in the _Starshine_ and find out what's happened." * * * * * The thousand million suns of the First Galaxy swam in space, attended by their families of planets. Three hundred million worlds had been populated by the human race. For thirty thousand years the descendants of the people of Earth--that almost mythical first home of humanity--had spread through the vastness of what once had seemed to them the very cosmos itself. In the older, long-settled planets, civilization rose to incredible heights of luxury and of pride, and then took the long dive down into decadence and futility while newer, fresher worlds still struggled upward from the status of frontier settlements. But at long last humanity's task in the First Galaxy was ended. The last planet suitable for human occupancy had been mapped and colonized. The race had reached the limit of its growth. It had reached, too--or so it seemed--its highest possible point of development. Matter-transmitters conveyed parcels and persons instantly and easily from rim to rim of the Galaxy. Disciplinary Circuits enforced the laws of planetary governments beyond any hope of evasion or defiance. There were impregnable defenses against attacks from space. There could be no war, there could be no revolt, there could be no successful crime--save by those people who controlled governments--and there could be no hope. So humanity settled back toward barbarism. Perhaps it was inevitable that conquest should again become possible, revolt conceivable, and crime once more feasible even to individuals, so that hope could return to men. And perhaps it was the most natural thing imaginable that hope first sprang from the prison world of Ades. Whispers spread from planet to planet. Ades, to which all rebels and nonconformists had been banished in hopeless exile, was no longer a symbol for isolation and despair. Its citizens--if criminals could be citizens anywhere--had revived the art of space-travel by means of ships.